I'M NUMBER SEVEN!: Or eight. Or nine. Out of 125 entrants in the Felix Morley Journalism competition for 2001-2002, I landed in the "honorable mention" slot. It appears seventh on the page but it's more like fifth or ninth, depending on how you delineate it and where you land in that "glass half empty/full" debate.

There are three descending cash prizes for first, second and third place finishers ($2,500, $1,000 and $750) followed by three equally compensated runners up ($250) and three “so sorry” honorable mentions. I’m at the head of last category but one gets the feeling that it really doesn’t matter where you land once there’s no more monetary gradation - and this is made more likely by the fact that my honorable co-winners, and the runners up, are listed in alphabetical order.

Well it looks like I won't be getting that imaginary laptop but congrats are in order to first my sometime editor and first place finisher Sara Rimensnyder, of Reason Magazine, as well as to Jason Miller, contributor to Spintech. (Yes, I edited the linked essay, so you can blame me for that whopper of a wrong word choice near the end.)

I could be bitter that one of the essays I edited helped to do me in regarding the cash prize, but a) it was a great essay and b) Lotts never win prizes - we're genetically and in all other ways disinclined. Three of my entered essays are currently on the Web. They are "The Less-Open Society," from Reason; "I'm Not In It for the Money," from Christianity Today; and "Bonnie Get Your Gun Off." I'll try to badger the Weekly Standard into putting up the fourth (of five) for later this week.